Always Kiss the Corpse Read Online Free PDF Page A

shifted to ebony. Now she was blonde again. Her vivacity made her attractive to men and women, older people and kids, and whatever she did to her hair or her face suited. She handed Lorna a printed list of her day’s appointments, the first at 11:00. The 4:00 PM meeting was inked in. “Coffee?”
    Lorna’s office was the smallest because these days she consulted less often with clients. She’d agreed to it; her real place of work was the lab. She was trained as a gynecologist, but most of her work had shifted from clinical to research. Dr. Gary Haines had set up the contract with Bendwell Pharmaceuticals, he was their schmoozer, but Dr. Lorna Albright ran the lab. Terry was in charge of day by day functioning, but Lorna organized, directed and evaluated the work. Tuesdays at the clinic she met the occasional client, consulted with Stockman, Gary and Richard, read the journals, and spent a chunk of time on-line, checking in with distant colleague-friends, reading through the circumlocutions of other sexual definition centers around the world.
    Dawn brought Lorna a steaming cup of coffee. Lorna settled in to a week’s worth of paper mail. She glanced at her watch; past ten. Then she gave herself over to the pleasure of checking abstracts of the articles she’d later choose to read. At four o’clock Dawn knocked on her open door. “They’re ready in the board room.”
    Around the long table, eight chairs. Lorna used to argue for a smaller table but the others believed a client should be allowed a physical distance from the three men and the woman who might transform his or her life. Stockman Jones, the urologist and surgeon of the team, now sat at the head, looking downright casual. To his right, Gary Haines, their psychiatrist. From the start Gary had specialized in human sexuality in large part because he himself loved sex and saw no need to hide this. Lorna couldn’t understand why women flocked to him considering he normally wore a pungent-pine aftershave that would work better as mosquito repellent. Across from Gary sat Richard Trevelyan, their endocrinologist and the most recent member of the team, with them for twelve years now. It was Richard who, thank goodness, had brought the clinic to the island. At sixty he was also the eldest team member. His comfortable face was handsomely craggy under a lot of white hair. Lorna smiled, said “Gentlemen,” her usual opening statement at such meetings, sat beside Richard and tried not to inhale Gary’s cologne.
    Stockman folded his hands and leaned toward the others. “Thank you all for making the time. Yesterday I went to the viewing for Vasiliadis. I’m afraid the event became a bit of a botch-up. The mother didn’t believe it was her son in the coffin.” He glanced from Lorna to Richard to Gary.
    â€œShit,” said Gary.
    Richard’s head was shaking. “They had the coffin open?”
    â€œApparently that’s usual in Greek Orthodoxy,” Stockman said.
    â€œDamn it,” said Gary, “why couldn’t—”
    â€œHang on,” Lorna broke in. She turned to Stockman. “Is there a problem here?”
    â€œI’m not sure. I don’t think so.”
    â€œCourse there’s a problem,” Gary said. “We sure don’t need negative publicity.”
    You should know, Gary, thought Lorna; the mess he’d left at the Seattle clinic—She addressed Stockman again. “But didn’t that nurse say it was definitely Vasiliadis?”
    â€œOf course. And everybody else who got a glance agreed. It’s a minor thing.”
    Richard sighed. “It’s a terrible thing. And I take full responsibility.”
    Lorna lay her hand on his arm. “Stop it, Richard.”
    â€œIt was my fault. If I’d administered the dosage over a longer time, three-four weeks maybe—”
    â€œRichard, Richard,” Stockman interrupted, “you were